Mar. 16, 2006

Walter W. Nix Jr., 44, was sentenced for strip-searching and sexually abusing a worker at McDonald's in April 2004.

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Walter W. Nix Jr. was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison for strip-searching and sexually abusing a teenage worker at the Mount Washington McDonald's in April 2004.

Nix, 44, pleaded guilty last month to sexual abuse, sexual misconduct and unlawful imprisonment of Louise Ogborn, who worked at the store.

He was the first person to be convicted in the hoax at the Mount Washington McDonald's in which Ogborn, a $6.35-an-hour counter worker, was strip-searched and sexually humiliated for nearly four hours after a caller convinced an assistant manager that he was a police officer investigating the theft of a purse from a customer.

Acting on the caller's orders, the manager, Donna Summers, began a strip search of Ogborn, and later called Nix, to whom she was engaged at the time, to come to the restaurant to watch Ogborn. A surveillance video showed Nix spanking Ogborn on her naked buttocks and forcing her to orally sodomize him -- acting, he said, on the orders of the caller.

Nix was sentenced by Bullitt Circuit Judge Thomas Waller, who said in court that he had viewed the video and couldn't accept that anyone would do what Nix had done based on the orders of someone over the phone.

Nix's attorney, Kathleen Schmidt, said yesterday that she will ask Waller for shock probation in 90 to 120 days.

She said she will present evidence showing that employees of other fast-food restaurants were duped in similar hoaxes, as well as an expert witness who will testify about how people generally obey orders from those they think are authority figures.

One of Ogborn's lawyers, Lea Player, said yesterday that she couldn't comment on Nix's sentencing because of a gag order imposed by Waller.

As part of Nix's plea agreement, Commonwealth's Attorney Mike Mann agreed to take no position on shock probation, which allows an offender to be released after serving a few months of his sentence. Mann also dropped a sodomy charge that carried a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Nix agreed to testify against the alleged caller, David Stewart, a former prison guard who is charged with soliciting sodomy and impersonating a police officer. He has pleaded not guilty.

Stewart's trial was scheduled for April 18 but has been postponed because of a scheduling conflict involving his lawyer, Steve Romines.

Romines said yesterday that he also will ask for a change of venue because of news reports that Stewart is suspected of pulling off dozens of other hoaxes at fast-food restaurants and other businesses from 1995 through 2004. He has not been charged in any of those cases.

Summers, who initiated the strip search of Ogborn, was placed on probation by Waller on Feb. 21, after pleading guilty to misdemeanor unlawful imprisonment.

She entered an Alford plea, meaning she maintained her innocence while acknowledging there was enough evidence to convict her.

Still pending is a lawsuit in which Ogborn claims that McDonald's failed to warn its employees about such hoaxes, causing her to be degraded and assaulted. She has asked for as much as $31 million in damages.

McDonald's has countered that Ogborn should have realized that Stewart, 38, wasn't a police officer and that Ogborn, Stewart and Nix are responsible for any damages.